Case Studies

Here you’ll find some great examples of Social Innovation from Northern Ireland and around the world.

To help you, we’ve split them up into the different stages of the Social Innovation Cycle.

Prompts

This stage of the social innovation cycle includes looking at all the factors which highlight the need for innovation – such as crisis, public spending cuts, poor performance, strategy as well as the inspirations which spark it, from creative imagination to new evidence.

This stage involves diagnosing the problem and framing the question in such a way that root causes, not just symptoms, will be tackled. A great example of this is Belfast based organisation TAMHI (Tackling Awareness of Mental Health Issues) which went through the SI Camp process to develop its project to use technology to support sports clubs to focus on delivering sport rather than backroom functions, leading to healthier, happier communities.

The team proposed a responsive website which was tied into a branding opportunity. The website would have two different sign in routes – one for those who participate in the sports activities (members) and then one for all the volunteers who work to deliver the sporting activities for the organisation.

Whilst this idea didn’t fully get off the ground, they went through the Building Change Trust’s Techies in Residence programme that then allowed them to develop their project into an app and a digital product that is helping them to deliver bigger and better services to their users.